Boalt's New Numbers

Published
4:00 am PDT, Thursday, August 20, 1998

SLOWLY, the admissions numbers at Boalt Hall School of Law are inching back to pre-affirmative action levels. After a drastic fall-off in minorities last year, the figures are climbing toward levels reached under a system that used race in selecting students.

The totals beg two diverging questions, likely to be asked by partisans on both sides of the divisive issue of race- based admissions. Do the new rules against preferences allow for gradual improvements, meaning that affirmative action isn't so necessary after all? Or do the figures mean the opposite -- that full-bore recruiting reminiscent of sports and new admission subterfuges will be needed to play catch-up on diversity?

It may take several more years to get an answer, but a new game is being played on the UC Berkeley campus to fill its elite law school. Two years ago, the UC Board of Regents and then state voters abolished affirmative action. Racial admissions nose dived to the point where only one African- American student was enrolled out of 268. Other law schools reaped the harvest, telling minority applicants to avoid Berkeley and depicting the school as hostile to non-whites.

Boalt administrators went into overdrive. Recruiters and older law students were sicced on applicants to convince them to come. Admission rules were redrawn to drop extra weighting for high grades earned at a top undergraduate school. Results of a national law school admission test were downplayed in admission ratings. The rule changes boosted chances for minorities without mentioning the forbidden subject of race.

In a perverse way, Berkeley's detractions made some minority applicants more determined to enroll, the better to upend its image as hostile to non-whites. One students said "it was so shocking that I think a lot of us said, 'well, let's not sit around disgusted, let's do something about it.' " The new numbers are an encouraging sign, but a very preliminary one of the future without affirmative action.